Firefly Lets Fire Phone Scan Just About Anything and Buy it From Amazon

Amazon's new Fire Phone had to be about getting people to buy stuff from Amazon, right? Of course. Enter Firefly, which turns the Fire Phone into a sort of universal object scanner that'll recognise books, DVDs, or jars of Nutella, and help you buy them—from Amazon.

This sounds a lot like Amazon Dash tucked into the new smartphone, but with much broader applications: whereas Dash was aimed at groceries and home products, Firefly will recognize pretty much anything. Scan a song, and it'll pop up an Amazon link or an iHeartRadio station. Scan a TV show, and it'll offer a DVD (naturally) but also info about the actors in the scene. It can even grab phone numbers, or scan artwork to pull up the related Wikipedia page.

Basically, in addition to being a smartphone, it sounds like Fire Phone is like a tricorder for the world around you. If it works in the real world the way Bezos says it will, that's gonna be strange and nifty and futuristic all at the same time.